A TALE OF TWO SCHOOLS.

The Minsk Humanities Lyceum is the only school in Belarus to offer a full curriculum in the Belarusan language. Teachers, students and parents staged protest actions from July 7-9 in downtown Minsk against the planned liquidation of the school. The authorities have ordered its merger with a Russian-language lyceum. Except for this last redoubt, the native language has, during Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s presidency, practically been expelled from the middle and higher education systems of Belarus in favor of Russian. (Belapan, July 7 and 8).

Effective today, the Tiraspol City Soviet closed the last medium school in that city–and in the whole of Transdniester–with a full curriculum in the Moldovan/Romanian language and instruction in the Latin script. (Basapress, July 9) The local Russian authorities have threatened to close that school in the past, only to relent at the last moment and keep it as a lone embattled showcase. The region is controlled by a non-native Russian minority. The travails of both schools–in Minsk and in Tiraspol–testify to the survival of leftist political forces that continue the Soviet-era linguistic russification in the middle of Europe.

GAZPROM TAKING OVER ARMENIA’S PIPELINES.